Needle
by Sierra Janeway
Summary: Erik knew that to be the face of a movement, he had to have a certain presence, a certain image. In finding a seamstress, he also found a friend - an elderly woman from the old country. After prison, he goes to find her again, for reasons practical and emotional. But ten years is a long time. [[Set mid-DOFP, no pairings]]
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: All original characters and such belong to Marvel._

**Summary: **Erik knew that to be the face of a movement, he had to have a certain presence, a certain image. In finding a seamstress, he also found a friend - an elderly woman from the old country. After prison, he goes to find her again, for reasons practical and emotional. But ten years is a long time.

**Chronology: **Mid-DOFP

**Pairings: **none

**Rating: **T for violence

**Author's Note:** Mostly this evolved out of a discussion about where Magneto could have possibly gotten his costume, a Tumblr post with tags jokingly asking if he can sew, and further encouraged by Hugh Jackman's comment to Ian McKellen in the blooper reel about "where should I look for you, shopping for capes?" But then my brain kept going and it got more serious than I'd expected.

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><p>Needle<p>

She had known about his abilities, and yet she'd always left a key out for him, hidden under a brick that edged the small flowerbeds on either side of the back entrance to the shop. Under cover of darkness, Erik casually slipped behind the building and dropped to one knee to pry up the brick and remove the key. It was entirely unnecessary, but nonetheless a gesture he appreciated, a sort of formality that said he was more than a common criminal, perhaps almost even a guest. He unlocked the door, then replaced the key in its hiding place. With slow motions and a hyper-awareness to all sounds he was making, Erik eased the door open and slipped inside, holding his breath. The green cloth hung in the window - the signal they had arranged to let him know when he could stop by the little shop without fear of intrusion or running into other patrons. He had barely dared to hope that it would be present - it had been ten years.

Sliding the door shut behind him, working it back closed within its frame inch by agonizing inch, he tried to get his eyes to adjust more quickly to the supreme darkness inside the back room of the store. He could vaguely make out the shapes of the shelving units on the walls, as well as some of the larger machinery sitting in the middle of the room. He blinked, shuffling forward slowly, hands out to feel the magnetic fields around the many metal objects in the room, using the sensations to make his way through the room like echolocation. But his foot bumped against a box and he stumbled a little, cursing under his breath. He stood there stiffly, willing himself to not so much as allow a muscle to twitch. He held his breath, straining to hear any kind of noise in the adjoining rooms. No doubt the woman and her husband were sleeping, and he didn't wish to wake them or startle them or give them any cause to think that there was a real intruder in their home. He simply wanted to make his way to his usual hiding place, to leave the usual signal and wait until the early morning when the woman woke and found his message and he could see another friendly face for the first time in ten years, have a friendly conversation, not have to worry about getting punched in the face, and refresh his image as the face of a movement. He would make a statement to the world, and with all the pieces he needed to properly sell the brotherhood, to recruit more good mutants to the cause.

When nothing happened, when he heard no noise and saw no movement, he let out a soft breath and eased forward again with tiny, measured steps. His eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness enough to make the movement easier, and he began to rely less on the sensations from the metal to guide him.

Perhaps that was why he did not notice the rush of movement until there was a body shoving him hard into the wall and something sharp pressed tight into the skin at his throat. He froze for a moment, stunned into submission.

"Who are you, and what the hell do you think you're doing in my workshop?" growled a female voice.

He blinked, trying in vain to focus in the dark, though his face was shoved into the cement wall. The voice...it was female, but it was not the voice of the woman whose acquaintance he had made after the Cuba incident, when he was first working out an aesthetic for his position as the head of the brotherhood and he had quickly realized that the image he wanted to project was beyond his own abilities. He knew the voice of the woman whose skills had saved him, and this voice was far too young. He had the correct address, the signal was placed as it should have been...so what had happened?

"I..." he started to say, but as his heart rate slowed, he realized that the sharp object at his throat was metallic. He breathed easier, realizing he had the upper hand, and his voice leveled out and deepened almost to a purr. "I'm looking for Inge Schulte."

"You have the wrong business," the woman replied, her own voice deep and warning.

"I don't think I do," Erik said simply, reaching out with his powers and assessing his options.

"I'm calling the police."

Her last syllable still hung in the air as the metal knitting needle flew from her hand and wrapped around her neck, tightening so it bit into her skin and she gasped for air and her hands scrabbled uselessly at the improvised necklace. Erik turned around leisurely to face her, sweeping one hand to the side casually to flick on one of the smaller lights. He had to quickly hide his surprise when the low light illuminated the woman's face, for she wasn't a woman at all - she was merely a teenager. A young girl with long tawny hair and walnut brown eyes in a pale face. Another casual flick of his hand and the metal eased its grip on her neck and she gasped frantically, the intake of air rising in pitch until she was able to fill her lungs. She pried her fingers under the metal, but to no avail. She looked up at him as she struggled, her gaze frantic. As she stared at him, something seemed to click and her eyes widened and she stiffened, her hands stilling on the metal wrapped around her throat. Slowly, the fear in her eyes was joined by a slow rolling hate, like thunderclouds filling the sky.

In the same instance, Erik was looking back at her, his own mind working slowly. Despite the surprise of finding her there instead of Inge, something about her was oddly familiar. He cast around in his memory as he took a slow step towards her, seeking to keep his position of power clear while he scrambled for information he knew he had.

Then it clicked. An old woman on her sewing machine. Her elderly husband smoking a pipe as he worked at a piece of leather. And a tiny girl sitting at the edge of the carpet, patiently turning small scraps of fabric into clothing for her dolls.

Inge's granddaughter. How had he forgotten? He studied the girl staring back at him, her knuckles turning white from where she tightened her fists around the metal and yanked. Ten years was longer than he'd imagined when it came to children. This girl had been barely seven when he'd last seen her, and now she was taller than her grandmother.

"Anneliese," he said simply.

She looked startled for a fraction of a moment before she spat back, "Murderer."

He told himself the word didn't sting a little deep somewhere, and he kept it well hidden from her. He wondered what she knew, and how, and had a moment of panic that he smothered as soon as it arose, wondering and then praying that Inge and Bertold hadn't turned against him in the time he had been gone. He supposed that he shouldn't have assumed they would stand by him, given what he had done - it had been flashed across every television screen and newspaper in the country. But the signal had been placed as usual...unless it had been meant as a trap? He allowed the cold doubt and worry no room in his body. He tsked at the girl softly. "Come now, I think your grandparents raised you better than that." He looked around the workshop area, just in case Inge had been waiting in the dark to surprise him. He raised a hand to loosen the metal from the girl's neck. "I need to speak with your grandmother. I realize it is late and I apologize for that, but it is the only time I could travel safely. I can sleep out here in the workshop and speak to her in the morning."

Anneliese stared back at him, her eyes having gone cloudy and blank. "Don't bother."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"She won't speak to you."

He felt a little chill. Perhaps they had changed their views of him. "Why not?"

"She's dead," the girl said flatly. "Last year."

There was no sound inside the room, and the whole space felt cold as they stood there, looking at one another. A minute could have ticked by, or five. Everything seemed empty.

"I'm sorry," Erik said at last.

"Me too."

He hesitated. "Bertold?"

She shook her head. "Four years ago."

"I am...so sorry."

She sneered. "So you're sorry about them, but not about the president?"

Automatically the metal tightened around her throat again, though not so tight that her airway was constricted this time. She gasped at the motion, trying to ward him off with her hands as he stepped closer, grabbing her arm and forcing her to focus on him. "You know nothing," he said viciously. He jerked his head in the direction of the back window. "Why the green cloth then, if it's just you?"

"She told me to!" Anneliese gasped. "Oma told me to! She made me swear to leave it there should someone need help! She didn't explain why, she just made me swear it!"

"That was our signal," Erik said. He looked around the room for a moment, taking stock of the fact that all the equipment seemed to be in place, before he returned his gaze to the teenager. "If they've passed on, who owns the shop now? Who runs this place?"

Anneliese raised her chin defiantly. "I do. It's mine."

"You're a child," Erik scoffed.

"It's held in trust by a neighbor until I'm of age! It is mine and I do all the work here, even as I finish school!"

He shook his head, smiling a little to himself in disbelief.

She narrowed her eyes and uttered a short string of German curses under her breath.

He regarded her thoughtfully. "You run this shop? You can do everything here that your grandparents did?"

"Of course," she said shortly, glaring back at him.

A smile slowly creased his face, and Anneliese regarded him suspiciously.

Erik waved one arm and more lights came on, and then waved the other arm and a number of the sewing machines sprang to life. Another flick of his fingers, and the metal circled around her throat twitched warningly.

"Congratulations," he said coolly, gesturing at the bolts of fabric. "You have an order to fill."


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: All original characters and such belong to Marvel._

**Summary: **Erik knew that to be the face of a movement, he had to have a certain presence, a certain image. In finding a seamstress, he also found a friend - an elderly woman from the old country. After prison, he goes to find her again, for reasons practical and emotional. But ten years is a long time.

**Chronology: **Mid-DOFP

**Pairings: **none

**Rating: **T for violence

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much for your kind, detailed, insightful reviews! I'm so glad other people are enjoying this idea that just wouldn't leave me alone until it was written. I really enjoy filling in more of Erik's history and backstory. On that note, I realized that I messed up when I listed the chronology for this story - it takes place not post-DOFP, but mid-DOFP. These first chapters actually take place after he sabotages the Sentinels and retrieves his helmet but before he steals the stadium in his new costume (obviously haha).

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><p>Needle<p>

Anneliese stared at him, her gaze as steely as the machines in the room. "I don't know what you mean," she growled. She continued to fuss with the metal he'd wrapped around her neck, despite the fact that she could do precisely nothing to it.

"It's rather simple, really," Erik said, striding over to a chair and flipping it around so that he could sit on it backwards, resting his forearms against the backrest. He looked up at her, his own gaze cool and assured. "I need to continue my mission, and the Pentagon took away all my belongings. Inge created the last outfit for me, here in this shop. The shop is yours now. And I need a new set of clothing, fit for the importance of my mission." He gestured at her with an open palm. "So the task falls to you."

She snorted disdainfully. "I'm not going to make you an outfit for killing more people in."

He instinctively closed his fingers over his palm in a fist and the metal contracted harshly against her throat, making her gag.

"This is very important," Erik said calmly, loosening the metal as Anneliese coughed and gave him a look full of daggers. "This is something bigger than me, and certainly bigger than you."

She looked away, working her jaw and shaking her head.

Erik watched her for a moment. "Let me put it another way," he said coolly, adjusting his grip on the back of the chair. "How many orders have you filled on your own, since your grandparents passed?"

Anneliese looked back at him, crossing her arms, her jaw tight and her eyes cloudy. She said nothing.

"As I thought," he said simply. "Surely there are a few regulars, those who know your skill, and they continue to commission garments. But new customers are hard to come by now, and likely even some of those who have come before are now wary. Perhaps people are put off by your age? Not so sure if a teenager can be trusted with such responsibility?"

Her face twitched and she stared at a spot over his shoulder.

"Rent for this location cannot be cheap," he mused.

"They had savings set aside," she said thinly.

"It won't last forever. And you still have to pay for the electricity, to order your supplies." He reached into the pocket of the pants Charles had given him on the plane, trying very hard not to think of his friend, and pulled out a wallet. He silently removed a thick wad of cash and spread it out slowly in front of her, making the large denominations clear.

He could see her eyes widen before she locked her emotions down and resumed her ever-present disapproving scowl. He smirked a little to himself. "Interested now, perhaps?"

"Where did you get the money?" she said, narrowing her eyes.

"Why does it matter?" he said softly, shuffling the bills with a practiced, casual motion. "Any tainted bill will pay your debts just as well as any other."

Her gaze flicked again to the money and her face seemed to soften just a fraction. Erik could tell that he nearly had her. He could threaten her, of course - she was already afraid of him, and knew what he was capable of - but it would be far easier, and much faster, if he could get her on his side, however slightly. And if he couldn't do it with philosophy, then bribery would have to suffice.

Her tone was slightly less harsh when she finally spoke. "It's three in the morning. I have school tomorrow."

He held back a smile. Progress. "You've taken ill," he offered. "And surely this wouldn't be the first time you've been absent."

"It's three in the morning," she repeated.

"All the better. We can work under cover of darkness."

She scowled. "I'm _tired_. I'm only awake because I heard someone breaking into my home."

Erik sat back on the chair and swept a hand towards a pile of fabric pushed into a corner. "Then by all means, have a nap."

"I'm not sleeping in here!"

"Then you may as well get to work." He fixed her with a steely gaze. "I have little time."

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he stared right back. For what seemed an eternity, they each held the other's gaze the way a hunter might hold a trap containing a still living animal mad out of its mind from pain and confinement. The air around them was cool and the room was so silent the quiet grated on their ears like noise, but there seemed to be a charge hovering somewhere, just waiting for a spark.

At long last, however, Anneliese crumpled just slightly, uncrossed her arms and shuffled over to the pile of fabric and kicked it to fluff it up before she collapsed clumsily into it, squirming around in an attempt to get comfortable. She pulled an oddly shaped piece of yellow polka dot fabric over herself as a makeshift blanket as she settled down. She kept her eyes warily on Erik.

He stood, moving the chair to another corner of the room so she wouldn't feel he was watching her sleep. This time he sat in the chair properly, sitting deeply in the chair and crossing his arms as he got himself comfortable. "I will wake you in two hours," he stated.

The girl on the floor started to make a noise of protest but then gave up halfway through the syllable, sounding resigned as she muffled the noise in the fabric.

Erik smiled a little to himself, not in small part from a relief he tried to hide. He kept a sort of self assured pleasantness plastered on his face until in the supreme quiet of the room he could hear the girl's breath slow and become more even, signaling she'd slipped into sleep. He waited another minute or two to be sure, but when he craned his neck to see around some of the equipment and was visually assured that she was indeed sleeping, he let that mask fall as he quietly exhaled and his whole body sagged wearily. He would never admit it, never allow another to see it, but he was profoundly shaken by this turn of events. With the girl more or less agreeing to complete the clothing he needed, he had thankfully reacquired control of the situation. He had told himself when he made his way from France back to America, sabotaging the shipment of Sentinels and retrieving his helmet once he arrived, that he shouldn't get his hopes up. It had been far too long and far too much had happened for him to be able to count on anything or anyone remaining consistent in their opinion or accessibility to him. Nonetheless, he had been prepared to defend himself, to make a good argument, to tell the truth about the assassination...even to plead, perhaps, if it came down to it - whatever he had to do to at least acquire the proper aesthetic to lead a revolution, if not to also hear a friendly voice again...

For some reason, he had failed to consider death.

Perhaps it was those long years in the Pentagon, in a soulless grey cell that never changed in the slightest and the interchangeable guards who slid his food into a shoot, turning his world into something simultaneously immutable and immortal, a place where he slowly came to feel as though time itself no longer existed and where he forgot that outside of those walls of glass and stone, time continued tumbling ahead, crushing everyone and everything under its relentless cogs.

He rubbed at his face tiredly, the images of Inge and Berthold's faces shimmering there in his mind's eye. After Cuba, after leaving his only friend there on the sand with a bullet wound in his spine and trying to forget the sounds and the smells of that day - the smoke, the gunpowder, the warmed and warped metal, the ocean salt, the blood - and how what he'd done to Charles made him sick to his core, after trying to just keep moving forward and focus on freeing and leading his mutant brothers and sisters, he'd realized how essential it was for him to project a certain image to be a leader (constantly trying not to think of Charles as an example). But he'd just as quickly realized that neither he nor his brethren possessed the skills necessary to construct him the proper attire. Without any real lead or idea of how to start, he'd turned to a phone book they swiped from a payphone and simply started reading through all the entries for seamstresses in the small Virigina city where he'd set them up a small temporary headquarters. He wasn't even sure what he should be looking for, but the sudden appearance of a German surname on the thin yellow page made him pause. He was loathe to trust any human at all (and half-wished he could somehow slip back to see Charles and ask him to help find a mutant who could sew), but a small part of him - a piece usually hidden under layers and layers of hate and hurt and anger and rigid focus on moving forward and never looking back except to conjure up the heat of those emotions to enhance his powers - was still inextricably linked to the old country and his heritage and it was enough of a connection, tenuous though it was, to drive him to take a chance.

Erik adjusted himself in chair, crossing one leg over the other and peeking over to make sure Anneliese was still asleep. Despite his constant rigid control of every aspect of his life, just thinking about these things made him feel vulnerable. And he would not feel vulnerable in front of a human, no matter how young and seemingly innocent.

His head still ached from the gash he'd gotten from the cement bottom of the fountain Beast had shoved him into, and he probed tentative fingers at the wound he'd stitched himself with thin metal wire in a cheap Paris hotel room while examining the film he'd stolen from the Trask people. He bit back a hiss. The dull aching throb had turned into a sharp prickling heat from his touch. He examined his hand and found blood on his fingertips. Sighing, he wiped the blood onto his pants and tried to push down the simmering frustration he had with himself for making the situation worse.

Not that it was a new experience for him.

He stole another look at the teenager as she slept, her forehead creased, perhaps from unpleasant dreams. Seven. She'd been just seven when he first came to this place, daring to approach in the daylight because few knew his face at that time, only those who had been on that beach in Cuba having any real knowledge about precisely who he was and what he was capable of. He'd wandered in, trying fervently to exude a sense of casual interest instead of desperation and uncertainty. He'd wandered between the racks perched on worn dark teal carpet in the small showroom, tensing instinctively when Inge approached him. But the woman was all smiles, perking up even more when he hesitantly greeted her in German. He kept up his structured, controlled front, but allowed himself to relax marginally as he spoke with her, discussing the necessary parameters for a custom order. She'd been so excited to be speaking German again that she'd closed the shop early and pulled her husband from the workshop so she could cook them all lunch while they sat and talked. He'd been startled to find a small child there as well, but the girl was quiet and unobtrusive, finishing her own meal quickly and running off to play in a corner while he became absorbed in conversation with the two adults.

Erik shook his head, as though he could physically shake off the memories that continued to unfurl in his mind, like a flower under a heat lamp. If he allowed himself a deeply honest moment, he felt badly about hurting a child, especially the child of two old friends. Inge and Bertold had both been so good to him. But they had also been human. And their granddaughter was human. The survival of his people was once again on the line. He had his mission. She was a useful part of that mission, and nothing more. He raised his hand in the direction of the back door, silently turning the tumblers and unlocking it, opening it just enough as he called his helmet to him from where he'd hidden it near the dumpsters outside. It settled softly in his outstretched hand as he relocked the door. Running his other hand over the surface, he glanced around the room at the different fabrics, the spools of thread, the machinery. He thought of the Sentinels, now with metal all twisted up in their insides, puppets on a string for him to command. He thought of the audience that would be present at the White House, the tv cameras that would broadcast his actions to an even greater audience. He thought of all the mutants watching, the lives he would save.

But Anneliese chose that moment to turn violently in her sleep, brow furrowed even further, one arm curled tightly near her face as she shivered under the insufficient cover of the discarded fabric and just that quickly he was remembering when it had been him shivering under a blanket too thin in a room too cold for the people crammed inside while men with guns in their hands and hate in their hearts stood watch, a misery that endured until Shaw turned him into a lab rat and awarded him small comforts like a room of his own in a well insulated building and thick woolen blankets. He clenched his jaw at the physical jab of pain that shot through him at the recollection, turning away from the girl and curling his fingers tightly into the helmet. She was a means to an end, he reminded himself harshly. This wasn't the same. She was part of the enemy, no matter how old she was or what she reminded him of.

Erik focused on the hands of a clock, counting each movement as he counted down the time he had allotted her. There was work to be done.


End file.
